Sacred and Profane
by NinjaSquirls
Summary: Gwen is not surprised, not really, to come in one morning and find Ianto standing stiff and frozen amidst puddles of coffee and shards of shattered china, glaring at Owen as if he wanted to strip his flesh from his bones. PostEnd of Days. JackIanto ish.


**A/N**: So, I read a line in another fic about Ianto shooting Owen again while Jack was gone, and the idea sort of stuck with me...and then I had an idea for a scene where Owen tries to take up Jack's office space and he and Ianto get into a fight over it. So I wrote...well, not this actually. I wrote something much shorter and more dialogue heavy, decided the pacing was horrible and ripped it up, and used the scraps to start this. Which I actually kind of like. Hope you do to.

**Disclaimer**: Hmm..normally I say that if I owned a show, you'd see a lot more sex and gay and whatnot, but um...honestly? I can't imagine doing much to Torchwood that the real writers don't do already. So I'll just say it's not mine.

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**Sacred and Profane**

It's been a month and a day since Jack came back to life only to leave again, and though none of them will say it, Torchwood is not the same. It is worse, somehow, then when they thought he was dead. When Jack was lying pale and still in the morgue they at least had the numb comfort of grief to hide behind; they could refuse to face it because Jack was gone and that was it, show's over, nothing left but the moving on, and who could ask them to face that?

But now Jack is just gone, God and the Doctor know where, and none of them know when – if – he's coming back, and so they are left with picking up the pieces of Torchwood and carrying on with business as usual, and waiting, always waiting, for the Captain, and the tension is terrible.

Gwen can feel it in the air in the Hub, like a line stretched tight, about to snap. Without Jack to fill up the place with outrageous stories and expansive gestures, without the larger-than-life aura that made him the Captain, it feels too-quiet, too-big, too-empty, like a building abandoned to rust and decay, as much as they all try to fill the spaces where he should be.

For all their attempts to act as if Jack has just gone on leave, to act as though everything were as normal as it ever could be, jokes fall flat, and idle gossip feels somehow irreverent; laughter echoes too loudly, and words sound too sharp. And so they hunch over their consoles and work silently, and try to pretend that the tension from the waiting and the brittle façade of normality isn't killing them all.

Gwen tries not to think about who will get hurt, when one of them finally snaps.

That is why Gwen is not surprised, not really, to come in one morning and find Ianto standing stiff and frozen amidst puddles of coffee and shards of shattered china, glaring at Owen as if he wanted to strip his flesh from his bones. It has not been a question of if, but when, one of them will go to pieces, and Ianto and Owen having a blow-up is a far sight better than Tosh smashing all the Hub's computers as she daily threatens, or finding Owen down in the Weevil cells or Ianto in the morgue with the knife Gwen knows he keeps in his desk drawer.

Or so she tells herself, observing from the stairwell Owen's hostile smugness and Ianto's expression like someone has ripped his heart from his chest as he demands to know what in bloody hell Owen thinks he's doing.

Owen sneers a reply about being the head of Torchwood Three and doing what he wants, but Gwen doesn't hear it; a few steps further down the staircase and she can see now what Ianto is half-hysterical over.

There is something dreadfully, fundamentally wrong with seeing Jack's office, which in a month has become nearly a shrine, taken over by Owen, his papers stacked all over and his computer monitor hooked up and his leather jacket on the coat rack and Owen himself sprawled in Jack's chair with his feet up on the desk. All Jack's pictures, his messy notes, his strange unidentifiable artifacts, even his coffee cups have been shoved aside in cardboard boxes stacked sloppily outside the door, but it is more than just the tangible evidence of Jack's existence. Whatever it was that has always made the office elusively, indefinably Jack's has dissipated, replaced by nothing but the presence of Owen.

It is enough of a shock to see that although Gwen knows she should be down there, breaking up the fight before it comes to blows, she is frozen, watching the ugly, spiteful sneer on Owen's face as he shoves himself to his feet and crosses the office in furious, jerky strides.

Ianto doesn't move still, doesn't even flinch with Owen mere inches away from him, finger jabbing viciously at his chest as he shouts at him.

"I am so bloody sick of listening to your blubbering," Owen snarls, the words harsh and unforgiving as stone. "Ever since Jack left it's been nothing but 'where's Jack gone?' and 'I wonder when the captain's coming back?' and 'I miss my bloody boyfriend.' When are you going to get it through your head that he doesn't give a damn about us, or about Torchwood, and certainly not about some pathetic little tosser of a teaboy? He is never coming back, Ianto, and it's about time everyone here got over it already –"

Gwen wants to stop him, wants to slap him across the face and shake him and call him a liar and just get him to _stop talking_. And she would, if the torrent of words now spilling out, the words that Owen's obviously been holding back for weeks, weren't the same fears and doubts that have been echoing in her head for the past month, as hard as she tries to ignore them. She would, if part of her didn't believe he was right.

Ianto, though, doesn't seem to agree.

"Shut up," Ianto hisses, and Owen obeys – not much choice, with Ianto's handgun pressing against his temple. Gwen hadn't even seen him go for it, but there it is, and his eyes, though glittering with unshed tears, are cold; his hands are shaking, but not so hard he couldn't pull the trigger, and at that distance he won't miss.

"I swear to god if you say another word I'll shoot you. It's not like I haven't done it before." Gwen doesn't doubt him, not a bit. If this is how he looks when he is merely threatening to shoot someone, without intending to follow through, Owen wouldn't be able to still look him in the eye and make those stupid little jokes after the first time.

"You know what I'm sick of?" he asks, and that slight waver in his voice is gone now, the coldness replacing it almost enough to make her shiver. "I'm sick of your yapping. I'm sick of your posturing and your tantrums and your pretending that being in charge makes you the boss here. As if we can't all see you for the miserable worm that you are. As if you weren't – you hadn't…god. You _bastard_."

He chokes on the last words, and in the brief silence Gwen finally finds her voice. She says his name – firmly but calmly, the way they taught her to do with hostage-takers and would-be suicides – and he jerks, startled. Drops his gun, the clang of steel on concrete painfully loud. Owen scrabbles away from him, nearly goes sprawling on an out-jutting bit of wall but doesn't stop until he is glaring at Ianto behind the safety of a desk several feet away.

"You'll clear out of the Captain's office now, Owen," she says, and she can see him taking breath to argue with her, but the look she throws him is sharp enough that he drops his head with a muttered "whatever, like it even matters."

And Ianto is still standing there, unmoving, as if he hadn't just been shouting, as if hadn't just almost shot Owen through the head, as if there weren't cold coffee soaking through his shoes, just staring blankly at the ground. She crosses the room, as behind her Owen makes a great show of loudly flinging his things into boxes and swearing not-so under his breath, and wraps her arms around Ianto, gently, as though he might break if she held him too tight; she can feel him trembling from head to toe.

"He will come back," he whispers, more than half to himself. "Owen was wrong about him being dead, and he's wrong about this. He'll come back to us. He'll come back to me. He _will_."

Gwen hopes to God Ianto is right about Jack. She could never say it out loud, but deep in her heart, she knows that Torchwood is slowly dying without him.

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End file.
